Running toward the park, she saw in her peripheral vision his inky black form giving chase with a blur of tiny, giddy footsteps. The sound of those steps had an odd mechanical rhythm, with a grating and snapping sound. Passing a columnar monument, she dashed down steps, and took another fall over the last few. The cushion of the coat helped break her fall, and she rolled onto the green, got up, and began dodging through the trees.
Polly felt the demon’s fingertips reaching for her. She dropped the coat with the hope of tripping him up. Still, she heard the snap and grind of his rapid, mincing tread. The sound of sloshing, the rattle of chain, and a hollow thumping told her that his bottle banged against his empty chest as he ran. Shouting for help, she crashed through the shrubs where she and so many others slept at night. Figures rose up out of the greenery, shouting, flailing. Her knee struck a man in the head and he went down. Another man came toward her. She couldn’t let him stop her or the demon would catch up. Polly struck the man in the face and kept moving. Two women grabbed for her. Polly twisted out of their grip.
The dark demon rose up in front of her. She turned sharply, tripped, and fell toward a tree trunk, striking the side of her head.
Then she found herself on the ground, the demon looming over her. He crouched, trying to catch her gaze. She kept her eyes averted. Raggedy men and women emerged from the shrubberies on all sides and held her down. Mr. Macklin took a drink from his bottle and blew his poisonous blue flame on her. She choked and gagged on the burning fumes and her belly began to convulse. Her gorge rose up and sprayed from her mouth. Her body caught the blue flame and she screamed with the pain as she burned.
This is a nightmare. None of it is truly happening! She wanted to awaken, but didn’t know how.
Gleefully, the demon stabbed and gouged her gut with the metal claws on his hands. Then he pierced her chest several times, pried open her ribs, and sang as he peered inside.
“The soul of you, the whole of you, that’s all what you can preach.
“The soul of you, a hole in you, as what your screams beseech,
“When darkness wants to sort you out, no more or less shall do.
“I take my time, and when I’m done, there’s nothing left of you.”
And with that, she knew he searched for her soul, that he rummaged in her chest unable to find her spirit quickly without having first captured her gaze. Although his visits had always seemed like nightmares, Polly’s world had been changed with each one. After his first, she’d known the demon’s entire infernal song. With the second, he’d punished Polly by taking the soul of her unborn girl. This time, he’d have Polly’s own soul if she didn’t fight him. She writhed in agony, unable to escape, yet kept herself from looking Mr. Macklin in the eye.
Perhaps entertained by the song, the homeless had gathered. Sitting in a circle around Polly, they warmed themselves by her flames, as the demon continued his search. One man had a skewer. He pulled a half-eaten sausage from his pocket, stuck the meat on the skewer and began heating it above Polly’s blackened, withering arm. She reached with the arm to grasp the skewer, and the man recoiled, but not fast enough. Polly had him by the arm. He cried out and dragged her away from the demon. Finally, he began beating on her with his free arm.
Another man, a constable, tried to pry her off. “Let go,” he shouted.
Polly wouldn’t as long as the homeless man carried her away from the Bonehill Ghost. Glancing back, she saw the demon rising to bound toward her.
The constable raised his truncheon. “You must give him what he wants,” he said, and brought the club down on her head.
36
Many Need Help
Polly awoke slowly in a hospital ward, pushing through terrifying scraps of recent memory involving the demon. Her gut trembled in an agony of cramps. She found herself involuntarily quaking against leather straps that held her down against a bed. Her sweaty flesh had been rubbed raw where the skin came into direct contact with the leather. The room felt hot as an oven. The shrieks and moans of those in the other beds assailed her ears, contributing to the ache of her pounding head.
Polly couldn’t stop her involuntary movements and tried to cry for help. Her voice came out a mere croaking, as if she’d gone hoarse from too much shouting.
A woman in her middle years, with hair graying at the temples, approached. Although she didn’t wear a uniform, she looked clean and was moderately well-dressed. “Try to remain calm,” she said in an even tone. “You’ve been here for several days. The symptoms will pass.”
Polly decided the woman was a nurse.
“Will you let me up?” Polly rasped, her body still writhing against her will.
“I’m sorry. It isn’t up to me. I’m told your body will flail uncontrollably without the restraints.”
Polly hated the nurse. She tried to spit on her, but couldn’t control her mouth well enough. Without choosing to do so, she began to pant. She felt the pulse of blood through the vessels of her neck distinctly as her heartbeat quickened.
The nurse sat in a chair outside of Polly’s view and leaned away for a moment. “You’ll be better soon,” she said, straightening and placing a cool, damp flannel on Polly’s forehead. “The doctor says you’re suffering delirium tremens. The symptoms are slowly passing. I’ve been with you as much as I can since you were brought in.”
Polly didn’t recognize the name of the illness. The cool flannel felt good. The woman’s soothing voice brought back vague memories of Polly’s mother taking care of her in sickness. As quickly as she’d hated the nurse, Polly loved her. She moaned and strained against her bonds to turn toward the voice. The woman adjusted her chair so that Polly saw her more easily. Still, her eyes could not focus on the nurse’s face.
“A hansom cab struck you in West Strand. A witness said you ran after a coat lying in the road.”
While the coat was a distant memory, Polly recollected with clarity that Mr. Macklin had come for her, that he’d changed from a white-whiskered gentleman into a devilish black figure. If he could assume more than one form, he might be anyone, including, Polly realized, the woman caring for her at present.
She prepared herself to turn away quickly to avoid eye contact. Watching warily for a time, she decided that the nurse was indeed what she appeared to be.
“How long?” Polly asked.
“Five days. You’re in the infirmary of Saint Giles’s and Saint George’s Workhouse.”
The moist flannel lifted, and Polly moaned for its return. She heard the sound of the cloth dipping into water, and the liquid dripping off as the fabric was wrung out. Then she saw the flannel’s blessed return, felt the cool cloth against her baking head.
“Thank you, Miss…?” Polly croaked.
“I’m Mrs. Hooks.”
The master blacksmith’s wife? If she knew Tom, she might tell him of Polly’s presence in the workhouse infirmary.
“I’m Mary,” Polly said, offering her given name instead of the nickname she’d used her entire life.
“Alexandra,” Mrs. Hooks said.
She had the name of the master blacksmith’s wife. She was his wife, a volunteer in the infirmary, not a nurse.
Mrs. Hooks dipped the flannel again and placed the cool, moist cloth back on Polly’s hot forehead.
“Why?”
“They brought you here after you were struck down in the road. There weren’t beds in any other hospital hereabouts. The doctors didn’t know you’d suffer so without drink.”
Clearly, knowing that Polly was a drunk didn’t trouble Mrs. Hooks.
“Yes,” Polly said, “but why do you do it?”
“Many need help,” Mrs. Hooks said. “I’m sorry you’ve been so miserable.” Genuine sympathy emerged with her voice.
How can it be as simple as that? Polly wondered.
She watched Mrs. Hooks. The woman didn’t look for a reaction to her words.
Yes, for Mrs. Hooks, that is all there is to it. People needed help, never mind
who they were or what they’d done in life.
Polly felt an odd pang of envy. She became curious about the source of the calm the woman possessed.
“I’m a volunteer here in the infirmary for a week at a time. They have a bed for me. Other times, I lend a hand in the workhouse proper. The work helps me feel grateful for what I have in life.”
Despite the distraction of Polly’s bodily torments, she’d heard Mrs. Hooks clearly. When the woman left in the evening, that was the last Polly saw of her. Mrs. Hooks’s words stuck with Polly much longer.
She suffers this place of misery, and gains solace by helping the less fortunate.
The concept wasn’t new to Polly. She’d seen in the woman’s eyes that the endeavor appeared to have borne fruit—Mrs. Hooks seemed at peace with herself. Polly suspected that for the first time in a long while, God had sent her a message.
Several days later, she was transferred to the Strand Workhouse, Edmonton, where she remained for a little over a month, regaining her strength. She was given light sewing duties and slept in the infirm ward. Over that time, thinking about the message, a growing religious fervor turned her suspicion into conviction: Mrs. Hooks had brought her word from God.
The Bonehill Ghost didn’t torment Polly just because she drank. He was after her soul. The Lord would not allow Mr. Macklin to pursue her if he favored Polly. He would protect her from the demon if not for her selfish ways. With sufficient selfless acts she might be redeemed in the eyes of the Lord, and perhaps in her own, as well.
* * *
As soon as she got back on her feet, Polly began looking for ways to make life easier for those suffering. She hoped that, as they were lifted up, so she would be. Her first success came when she found a pair of shoes for Mrs. Weir, a seventy-year-old woman who entered the Strand Workhouse barefoot on the same day as Polly. Mrs. Weir’s twisted feet suffered a crippling arthritis. The best the infirmary had done for her was to wrap her feet in bandages. Polly found the shoes in a bin full of the clothing of those who passed away in the infirm ward. They had belonged to an unusually tall inmate. Because of their large size, they were adapted easily to fit Mrs. Weir’s misshapen feet. The smile on her face when presented with the shoes was like sustenance to Polly after a long fast.
When Polly had regained much of her health, she was transferred to the Lambeth Workhouse since that had been the union where she first entered the relief system.
37
Paupers
Polly folded the letter from her father and put it away in a pocket of her uniform. The only important news the correspondence provided was that her eldest, John, lived with Papa again. She had not informed her father of her situation within the Lambeth Workhouse, but he’d known about her previous stay in the institution. That must have been the reason he’d thought to write to her there. Although he expressed concern for her well-being, she hadn’t responded to him.
Sipping her broth and shuffling her feet to help wake them from a tingling slumber, Polly looked up at the overcast spring day outside the tall windows set too high on the brick walls to reveal more than sky. Good morning, she said silently toward the gray clouds. Then she glanced at the messages painted on the walls beneath the sashes in blue letters two feet high— “God is good. God is just.”—and nodded in silent agreement.
Thank you, Almighty God, for this sanctuary, and for protecting me from the Bonehill Ghost. I know the dull life I endure here is fitting punishment for the selfishness of my past.
The high-ceilinged dining hall of the Lambeth Workhouse had the atmosphere of a house of worship. Since the saying of grace before the meal began, no one had said a word. They were all too intent on drinking their broth. Polly found the chamber peaceful in the morning, even with the strong odors of the infrequently washed bodies that filled it, the inarticulate moans of those among the gathering who suffered, and the murmur of their respiratory and gastric functions. She sat elbow to elbow with six other inmates, on a bench meant to provide seating for five, before a table wider than need be, considering the amount of food it was required to hold. Several rows of ten identical tables and their complement of benches filled the hall, and all seats were occupied by hungry souls.
Despite the ache in her hips and shoulders from sleeping on a straw mattress too thin to protect her forty-three-year-old body from a hard wooden bed, Polly smiled as best she could. The women facing her, young and old, some inexpressively sad, others resigned or despondent, avoided looking at her. Given their situation, she knew her smile made them uncomfortable. Still, she intended to provide others all she had that was uplifting.
The woman to her left, Laura Scorer, appeared to be under the weather. Since Polly would feel hunger pangs before the noon meal whether she finished her breakfast or not, she poured some of her own broth into the woman’s cup. Laura smiled sadly and opened her mouth to say something. Instead, she eagerly downed the liquid food as if it might be taken away any moment.
The gift of broth was a small matter. Polly looked forward to a greater effort she made each evening; providing reading and writing lessons for the Dobson twins, young women too old to be included in the schooling provided for the children. Great or small efforts, all were good works that would see Polly through until God was ready for her.
May of 1888 had come, and Polly felt good about herself for the first time in many years. She had returned to her habit of praying for others. Life in the workhouse became harder each day as her body slowly failed her, yet the institution provided protection from her own worst excesses, in part because alcohol, the poison which brought forth her self-serving, grasping nature, wasn’t allowed inside the institution.
Clearly, her sins, especially those committed in her selfish pursuit of drink, had attracted the Bonehill Ghost to covet her soul. She believed that each of her selfless good deeds made her spirit less appealing to him. With patience and further sacrifices for others over time, she knew he would lose interest in her and she would be redeemed in God’s eyes.
Chaplain Emes gave the after-breakfast devotion. While putting her hands together in prayer, Polly gently rubbed the aching joints of her digits, careful not to crack open the painful whitlows at her fingernails that came from endless hours of picking oakum.
At the end of the prayer, Polly added her voice to the others, “In the name of Christ. Amen.” Then she rose and followed those moving between the tables to the women’s stairs that led down to the women’s yard, a paved rectangle under the open sky, bordered on two sides by blocks of the workhouse dormitories, and on the remaining two sides by high stone walls.
Dumps Alice waited as usual in the corner of the yard where the two blocks came together. Instead of the workhouse uniform worn by the inmates, the young woman wore a ragged gray-blue linsey skirt that had probably once been indigo, a stained brown woolen shawl, and a wilted gray bonnet. She seemed to move somewhat more freely in and out of the workhouse than did the other inmates, trading her wares: bits of mirror, candle ends, matches, and sundry dumps. When Polly had stayed in the Strand Workhouse, she’d seen Alice coming and going from there as well. She either had agreements with the matrons or masters of both institutions or with the governors of those poor law unions. Her trade wouldn’t earn her enough for a significant bribe, however. Polly assumed that, like so many of the desperate scavengers of London, the woman barely eked out an existence.
While in the Strand Workhouse, Polly had asked another inmate, Grace Feldman, about the woman. “Don’t talk about her,” Grace had said. “She does nothing but good. She might be a tramp major.”
“A tramp major?” Polly said.
“Some vagrants are given shelter for a different service. I don’t know what task she’s given, but she doesn’t have to labor as we do.”
When Polly approached, Dumps Alice didn’t look up. The woman kept her face always downcast, in angle as well as expression. She further hunched her already stooped shoulders. Locks of limp, oily brown hair, having escape
d the confines of her bonnet and the tight bun at the back of her head, stuck to her forehead and neck.
“I have three buttons,” Polly said. “I should like to trade for cigar or cigarette ends, if you have them?”
Without a word, Alice rifled through the dusty, stained sack which hung from her left shoulder.
Polly had plucked the buttons from garments in the laundry. She had worked many times in the laundry and noted that buttons frequently went missing. Even if she got caught, who would know she hadn’t found the buttons lying on the floor somewhere? Still, her small theft, committed for the best of reasons, qualified as a refractory offense within the workhouse. Polly considered the possibility of punishment worth the risk to see Mary Ann Monk’s craving for tobacco satisfied, if only for a short time.
Alice and Polly made their exchange simultaneously, palming their goods to one another. Polly received one cigar end and that of a cigarette. She turned away, satisfied that her day had begun with a good deed.
* * *
Following the afternoon work period, as Polly headed to the privy, the Porter, Mr. Overguard, approached. “Come with me,” he commanded. Although startled and apprehensive, Polly had no thought to refuse him. A solid boulder of a fellow, he had a stout frame and slabs of hard muscle, black hair, heavy brow and deep-set eyes. She’d imagined that the reason his clothing always looked so threadbare was that it suffered from abrading against his skin. He conducted her to the office of Mrs. Fielder, the old, white-haired Matron. Seeing Dumps Alice seated within the chamber, Polly knew the young woman had told of their trade.
Mrs. Fielder rose from her desk and began a search through Polly’s clothing. She found only loose strands of pitch-streaked oakum, leftover from the afternoon’s labor. “Where is the tobacco?” Mrs. Fielder asked. Her brow arched high, stretching the translucent skin of her eyelids so thin that Polly seemed to see past the architecture of the eyes to the deep sockets of the old woman’s skull. She shuddered to release the vision.
A Brutal Chill in August: A Novel of Polly Nichols, The First Victim of Jack the Ripper Page 20